The New Health Care Drumbeat: States' Rights, or Tea Party Activism?

Gosh, that didn't take long: The new GOP plan for health care is the barter system — as in, you grow a batch of vegetables, take them down to your doctor's office, dump them on his receptionist's desk, and... bingo! Cancer treatments!

Sample line: "I know someone in the medical field who has been paid with vegetables from the Mennonite community."

"The act protects the right of Tennesseans to participate or not in any health care system, and prohibits the government from imposing fines or penalties on that person's decision. It also protects the right of individuals to purchase — and the right of doctors to provide — lawful medical services without government fine or penalty."

It passed by a vote of 26 to 1.

The real question is, Is this kind of thing just a cynical attempt to harvest Tea Party anger for the Republican party, or are these legislators really planning to resist and violate federal laws? It's similar to the larger question a conservative political philosopher named William Voegeli asked in the Wall Street Journal in this thoughtful article: "Is the repudiation of the welfare state a prerequisite for a coherent 21st-century conservatism — or a quixotic, self-marginalizing gesture?"

Right now, regardless of whatever happens in November, I'm betting on the latter.